A Mississippi resident has stunned Reddit users after accusing her neighbor of picking all the blueberries from the bush in her yard when she wasn't around.
In a viral post, user u/x_xDeathbyBunnyx_x said the neighbor recently "asked if they could pick" some blueberries as he had seen her doing the same. At the time, she wasn't sure because she'd hardly interacted with the man before. But she agreed, and, as she told Newsweek, she "didn't want to be rude."
The Redditor suggested that they could pick the berries together, but when she stepped outside Tuesday she was horrified to see how bare the bush looked. She believes the neighbor came over without telling her and picked "almost every berry off the bush."
She posted several pictures of it on Reddit and the post has gone viral, with over 12,000 votes and 880 comments in just days.
The poster told Newsweek: "The berries appear to be picked on Sunday at dusk. I walked out Tuesday and saw the bushes looking thin. When I got up close, I could tell that hundreds of berries on each limb were gone, and instead each limb had just one or two left.
"It was pretty devastating because I always go out to pick berries any chance I get, not just because I love them but because it's a peaceful time to reconnect with nature. I haven't seen the neighbor yet, so they have neither confirmed nor denied," she said.
As a result, the blueberry bush is now almost empty, and the Redditor said it's ruined the harvest "for the rest of the year." The neighbor even picked off some of the unripe blueberries, which won't ripen off the branch.
"I was sad that they were all gone, for me and also the birds and squirrels who snack on them," she said.
"I was also mad for the violation because someone came onto the property without supervision and proceeded to destroy the blueberry harvest. The green ones don't ripen off the tree, so it was truly senseless and wasteful."
Since sharing her anger about her neighbor on Reddit, the post has divided opinion online. Some users have urged her not to jump to conclusions and suggested it could have been animals instead, while others were equally horrified.
The poster admitted that since she doesn't have footage of her neighbor picking the blueberries she can't rule anything out. But she insisted that all signs point toward a human taking them rather than a wild animal.
"There were very few berries and leaves on the ground, and no berries that were close to the ground had been touched, but some over 6 foot high had been picked. So it seems likely it was the neighbor," she told Newsweek.
"Not to mention the timing of him saying he loved my blueberries. I'm pretty sure that the guy took my invitation to pick berries together as permission to get them on his own in whatever way he saw fit."
Many people shared their thoughts about the shocking discovery. One comment reads: "My jaw dropped reading that. The audacity."
Another person responded: "You need to say that's not acceptable, and they are not able to have any more this or any other years. I'm so sorry!"
Another Reddit user wrote: "Why on earth would they pick green berries ... give an inch people take a mile."
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